


Magic & Prayer

by DictionaryWrites



Series: Patrician & Clerk [23]
Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Father-Son Relationship, Found Family, Humor, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Unseen University, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-18 08:20:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18116942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: I really wanted to play with that Ridcully & Drumknott dynamic, so! I did so for almost 12k.“I’m reading, sir.”Ridcully set his jaw, and he put his hands on his hips, bearing down on the lad. He was rather small, Ridcully noticed – he expected he was quite short, even when stood up, and he looked very slight, as if a stiff wind might knock him down. “You,” he said, with a decisive jab of one finger, “remind of the Bursar.”“I’m sorry to hear that, sir,” the boy said politely.





	Magic & Prayer

It was whilst he was briskly walking on the campus that he saw him.

Mustrum Ridcully stopped, peering down at the young man before him. The young man was approximately thirteen years old, and was sitting on the grass outside the Unseen University Library, neatly cross-legged upon a perfectly square section of picnic blanket. Beside him rested a cup of tea in a saucer, steaming slightly and smelling of herbs, and in his lap was a book that, the printed title at the top of each page declared, _The Birds of the Ramtops_.

“Hm, what!” he said, by way of greeting. He had only been Archchancellor for a few months, and had not gotten the hang, yet, of all the students’ names. For that matter, he had no intention of _getting_ the hang of it. Dashed students. They cluttered up the place.

The young man looked up at him. He was a funny-looking sort, his cheeks rounded and perennially red, with a small, square chin, and brown eyes. His hair, which was a light chestnut that tended to red where the sunlight caught it, was greased back with some sort of unguent, and he had a parting that looked like it had been measured with a rule[1]. “Good morning, Archchancellor,” the boy said evenly.

“What are you doing?” the Archchancellor barked. He did not mean to shout, necessarily: it was simply a habit to which he tended, and had never grown out of the habit of. Even his whispers were explosive in volume.

“Reading, Archchancellor.”

“That a library book?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What are you doing with it outside?”

“The Librarian said he’d clip me around the ear if I wouldn’t go outside, in the sun. He does trust me to look after the book, sir.” Ridcully frowned, furrowing his brow. The Librarian was an orangutan, and only ever said variations of _Ook_ and _Eek_. “Words to that effect, Archchancellor,” the young man added, as if reading the objection in the thick forest of his eyebrows.

“Ah,” said Ridcully. “You a wizard? No beard. No robes. No hat!”

“No, sir,” the young man said.

“Why are you here then?”

“I’m reading, sir.”

Ridcully set his jaw, and he put his hands on his hips, bearing down on the lad. He was rather small, Ridcully noticed – he expected he was quite short, even when stood up, and he looked very slight, as if a stiff wind might knock him down. “ _You_ ,” he said, with a decisive jab of one finger, “remind of the Bursar.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, sir,” the boy said politely. He had a city accent, that much was true. Probably not from that far off – Dimwell, perhaps, or one of those districts in the city. _Not_ the Shades, unless he was hiding a lot of knives under those tightly-tailored sleeves. Despite the summer warmth, the young man was wearing a suit. Three-piece.

“Accountant, is it? Librarian? Clerk?”

“No, sir. I’m a student, sir, at the Linkston Academy, on the way to Sto Lat.” The Linkston Academy was a school for young men, Ridcully was dimly aware. Lower middle class and upper working class sorts – the sort that’d end up well-to-do young men, who ended up serving their betters.

“Why aren’t you reading there?”

“It is a Saturday, sir. I don’t board every weekend.”

“Why not, eh? Avoiding sports and what not?”

 “That is among my reasons, sir.”

“You look like you should be running somewhere, what! Young man, sunny day, nice summery clime, do some _exercise_.”

“I don’t think so, Archchancellor. I’m reading.”

“No point _reading_. Go out and _look_ at some dashed birds, don’t just read about them in a book!”

“Birds in the Ramtops, sir?” the boy asked, delicately arching one eyebrow. Ridcully hated people who arched their eyebrows with that sort of smooth delicacy. The _Patrician_ did that.

“The Library is for wizards, not for— not for young boys.”

“The Librarian never informed me of that restriction, Archchancellor. I do apologise.” He did not sound very apologetic, and his expression didn’t so much as flicker.

“Why aren’t you in one of the other libraries, what? At the— Er, the Historians’ Guild, perhaps.”

“The historians often attempt to assist me in my research, sir. I find it distracting.”

“Archaeologists’ Guild?”

“The archaeologists are rather chatty for my tastes, Archchancellor.”

“The Assassins? They’ve got a very good library, so I hear.”

“Their library is adequate.”

“Well, good!”

“No, sir. Adequate.”

“The Librarian sent you out here?”

“Yes, sir. He said it was important a young man my age get appropriate amounts of sun.”

“He give you the cup of tea?”

“I made the tea, sir, but the Librarian did tell me to.”

“Hum. He give you the picnic blanket?”

“Yes, sir.”

“He didn’t fold it like that though, did he?”

“No, sir, I did.”

“Got a ruler in your pocket, eh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“A protractor too, I expect?”

“Yes, sir.”

“ _Bursar_.” This was said with some scorn.

“No, sir.” The young man did not seem to be frightened of scorn.

“Hmph!” Ridcully said, and he marched toward the Library, stepping inside. The Librarian looked up from his desk, where he had apparently stopped for a tea break[2].

“Ook?” he asked.

“There’s a young man out there,” Ridcully said. “Little chap, wearing a suit, reading a book.”

The Librarian gave a blink of two droopy eyes. “Ook,” he said. Despite the fact that the Librarian spoke only in variations of _Ook_ and _Eek_ , none of the other wizards had any trouble understanding him. Nor, indeed, did the young man outside. The fact that the Librarian was an orangutan, at this point, seemed to deter nobody on the Unseen University campus, and Ridcully, who had only ever known the Librarian in his current shape of a great sack of potatoes, fringed with red-brown fur and leathery skin, thought he was a fine chap.

It went like this.

The young man, who was actually sixteen, was Rufus Drumknott. He was the son of Jasper and Miriam Drumknott, who used to own a grocer’s in Dimwell. Jasper had died when Rufus was about eight years old, and Miriam had died when he was fourteen. Since he was six or so (since before, in fact, the Librarian was an orangutan), he had been coming to the Unseen University and reading in the Library. The Librarian liked him; more importantly, the _Library_ liked him. There didn’t seem to be much point in turning him away.

“Can he do magic?” the Archchancellor asked.

The Librarian looked thoughtful. “Ook,” he said.

“Hm,” the Archchancellor said, and he walked back out of the Library.

“You! Drumknott!”

He looked up from his book. “Good morning, Archchancellor,” the boy said evenly.

“Can you do magic?”

“I’m not a wizard, sir,” Drumknott said.

 The Archchancellor frowned. This was not, he noted, an answer to the question. “Yes, well, have you got the talent?”

“I’m sure I wouldn’t know, sir.” Drumknott wasn’t the sort to say much. He wasn’t, as they say, _talkative_. He wasn’t _chatty_. Ridcully had a natural distrust of this sort of person – he felt that if they weren’t sharing their opinions, those opinions were likely as wrong as most people’s, but he wasn’t being given the opportunity to correct them upon their airing. This was an injustice.

“You want to give it a try?”

“No, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“You’re telling me, Drumknott, that you come here, to the university, every— Whenever  you can, and before you were here every day, what, just to read the books?”

“No, sir,” Drumknott said. “In March, I play piano for Room XB several times a week, at the behest of Professor Hoo. It’s one of the more unfavourable file rooms, sir, and responds well to music.”

The Archchancellor sighed. “ _Then_ ,” he went on, “you mean to tell me that you come here only to read books and play piano?”

“No, sir. Sometimes I eat lunch with the Librarian.”

“You grate on the nerves, Drumknott, has anybody ever told you that?”

“No, sir,” the boy said. _Liar_.

“And you never wanted to do any magic?”

“Not especially, sir.”

“Have you read any magical books?”

“Yes, sir, one or two. Recommended reading from the Librarian, and from Professor Pelc. I’ve never tried any spells.”

“You should!”

“No, sir.”

“Well!”

“Well, sir.”

“Why wouldn’t you want to be a wizard?”

Drumknott seemed to consider the question, although his expression remained almost blank. His dark brows moved slightly closer together as he furrowed them, and then he said, “I like organisation, Archchancellor. I don’t know that magic is well-disposed to being organised.”

This was a very difficult point, and one that was hard to argue with, so Ridcully decided not to bother. “What a nonsense reason,” he said.

“As you say, sir.”

Frowning, Ridcully shook his head, and he walked away.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

The other wizards at the University, Ridcully discovered, knew Drumknott quite well. He brought him up, casually, at a meeting in the Uncommon Room, and was curious to find the response: dread.

And this was from the _faculty_. They said that young Drumknott was on the campus whenever he wasn’t working at school. Then, once he finished his schooling, he was here on all of his days off, as he started clerking for the match factory in Nap Hill.

Professor Pelc, the Prehumous Professor in Morbid Bibliomancy, spoke with Drumknott often enough, Ridcully knew that. Drumknott would sometimes bring him something from the bakery he liked in Sator Square, or speak to him in the corridors. He said that Drumknott’s father had been an alcoholic: he’d smiled the rest of the day, Pelc said, after his father died.

Professor Jitter, Lecturer in Applicated Anxiety, was a member of Ankh-Morpork Stationery Appreciation Society, of which Drumknott was now the secretary[3]. Jitter, who was well into his eighties, would often walk back to the University alongside Drumknott, who apparently really _did_ walk around Ankh-Morpork in the middle of the night, with no fear whatsoever.

The Librarian said that Drumknott was a quiet, sensible young man who was very concerned with his duty. Professor Hoo, the Professor of Magical Mixology, said that Drumknott played piano for one of his antsier file rooms every March, and that he thought Drumknott was a little frightening, but a thoughtful man. The household staff said that Drumknott was quiet and polite, whenever he met them in the halls.

But he was—

 _Silent_.

Strangely silent and unemotive, thoughtful and considerate, and yet with an undercurrent of wilful certainty.

“He’s never said a bad word to me,” Professor Pelc said, “but sometimes you get the impression that if he thought it would benefit Ankh-Morpork as a whole, he would rip out your throat with his teeth.”

Ridcully hadn’t especially got that impression.

Perhaps it would come later.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

It was early August, a year later, when Ridcully came down to the Library to see what all the fuss was about. He watched, with mild curiosity, as a man covered in blood, all caked to one side of his face, sprawled over the shoulder of the _gigantic_ young man who was now, Ridcully was reliably informed by his golden breastplate, polished to a beautiful shine, was a member of the City Watch.

Gingery, with freckles spotting across his handsome young face, he gave Ridcully a polite smile, and bowed his head slightly.

“Good evening, Archchancellor Ridcully,” he said.

“Hello,” Ridcully said. “What did he do?” He nodded to the unconscious fellow over the young Watchman’s shoulder.

“He did a lot of bleeding, sir,” the young man said sympathetically. “But before that, he committed an act of vandalism in the library, with the hope of stealing some books in the distraction, sir. If you’ll excuse me, Archchancellor, I need to take him back to the Watchhouse and get his head bandaged, but Commander Vimes is interviewing the Librarian and Mr Drumknott right now.”

“Drumknott, eh?”

The young man gave Ridcully a smart salute, not dislodging the fellow even as his arm moved, and Ridcully grinned in an absent way as he moved forward, examining the scene. A few of the books were disturbed, and, Ridcully noted, there was a streak of blood staining one of the bookshelves, and, Ridcully noted, a little bit of ear stuck to the wood. There was a staple through it.

Ridcully grinned, and he turned to the Librarian’s desk. Drumknott, his suit spattered with blood, had his hands in his lap, and was seated on the edge of the desk, his legs hanging down: his lip was split, and there was a rather nasty bruise forming over one of his eyes. The Librarian, who was standing just next to him, one of his drooping shoulders in line with Drumknott’s knee, was speaking to Vimes at length.

“Ook, ooOOook, _ook_ ,” the orangutan said patiently, speaking slower than he ordinarily would.

“ _And so I biffed him upside the head_ ,” Drumknott translated, “ _with Godfellow’s Relative Stringiness Theory **[4]**. He went down just before Carrot ran in, and Mr Drumknott took his knife off him.”_

“Ook,” the Librarian said, and Ridcully laughed.

Drumknott hesitated a moment, under Vimes’ expectant stare, before he added, “ _And he’s lucky it was Drumknott and Carrot, and not me.”_

“Really, Mr Drumknott?” Vimes asked, leaning back on his heels. He looked very different these days, everyone told Ridcully – he used to be a drinker, but he wasn’t now. He was to be married to young Sybil Ramkin[5], and was doing his best to _improve_ the City Watch. “A stapler?”

“I didn’t think much about it, Captain Vimes,” Drumknott said quietly. “I don’t take well to being threatened.”

“Ook,” said the Librarian. Drumknott coloured slightly, and Ridcully crossed his arms over his chest, raising his eyebrows. Vimes glanced at him, apparently confused – he didn’t have the natural knack of understanding the Librarian, judging by the way the Librarian rolled a pair of soulful eyes.

“ _What_ did you do at the Assassins’ Guild, Drumknott?” Ridcully asked.

“Nothing,” Drumknott said. “And it wasn’t at the Assassins’ Guild, it was at the travelling fair three years ago. She just happened to be an Assassin. She’d only just taken black, though.”

“What did you do?” Vimes asked.

“Is it relevant to your investigation, Captain?”

“No, but I’m _curious_ ,” Vimes said. Drumknott coughed in that quiet, prim manner that some librarians and clerks have. It was genteel, and polite, as if it was the only proper way one might show their displeasure at something.

“Marie Vesten, one of the Assassins’ Guild students, took offence to something I’d said, as to my disinterest in apple-bobbing. She pushed my head under the water, I felt, with a view to drowning me in it.” Ridcully considered the idea of a much younger Drumknott drowning in a tub full of apples. The idea amused, if not appealed. He coughed once more, the flush visible on his cheeks, and he said, “I made use of her lacking concentration to reach for the dirk at the concealed holster at her thigh. Lord Downey intervened.”

“Sneaky little sod, aren’t you, Drumknott?” Vimes asked.

“I’m sure I wouldn’t know, sir,” Drumknott said politely. His face was a mask. Vimes snorted, and he finished up the last of his notes.

Once he was gone, Ridcully listened to the Librarian detail the whole story – the fellow had been caught putting some stink bomb or other in amongst the shelves, and when Drumknott had caught him at it, he’d told Drumknott to keep quiet. Drumknott had been unwilling, apparently, and the Librarian had come to see the young man smacking him back against the wall with a stapler, and dodging away from the knife when young Carrot of the Watch had stepped in.

“Nasty shiner there,” Ridcully said.

“It doesn’t hurt,” Drumknott said, and Ridcully scoffed, rummaging around in his robes to find the right tin.

“Been punched before, eh?”

“Yes, sir,” Drumknott said quietly. His knuckles, Ridcully noted, were red-raw on the left hand, where he’d punched the would-be thief.

“You should let the Librarian handle things next time, what?” Ridcully said. “Stupid of you to get yourself involved like that. Could have killed you with that knife, and they’re only _books_ , eh?”

“No, sir,” Drumknott said.

“ _No_ , sir? What do you mean, _no_ , sir?”

“They’re not _only_ books, sir,” Drumknott said. “They’re books, sir.” He said it very seriously, in a kind of terse, brittle tone. Behind him, Ridcully heard the quiet flutter of approving pages in the Library at large, but he ignored them, finding the right tin and drawing it out of his pocket.

“Chin up, head back,” he said crisply, and to his surprise, Drumknott didn’t try to argue. He obeyed, and although he looked at the tin with some suspicion, he didn’t flinch away as Ridcully daubed a little of the cream within on his fingers, brushing them against Drumknott’s eye, which was red all about, and beginning to darken in colour. Drumknott inhaled, his nostrils shifting.

“Arnica. Comfrey. Is that mint?”

“No,” Ridcully said. “It’s dill.”

“My aunt makes an ointment like that. She’s a witch.” A witch, eh? That made sense, Ridcully supposed, given Drumknott’s lack of reaction to magic, his quietly sensible attitude. It wasn’t very wizardly, but _witchy_ , it was.

“Hmph,” Ridcully said. “It’ll bring down the swelling.”

“Yes.”

“Need a lot of ointment for bruises, do you?”

“Not anymore.”

“Why not anymore?”

“My father’s dead, sir.”

“Oh, I see,” Ridcully said. He didn’t show any surprise on his face. He didn’t feel any. “Bit of a bruiser, was he?” Drumknott didn’t say anything, just let Ridcully daub the rest of the ointment onto his eye, and then he pulled his hand back, closing the cannister and setting it into his pocket. Drumknott was quiet, his lips pursed loosely together.

“Ook,” the Librarian said, coming back from between the stacks, with a coat over his shoulder – Drumknott’s coat.

“Where d’you live?” Ridcully asked.

“Dimwell, sir.”

“That’s the other side of the city, lad,” he said.

“It’s not so far.”

“It’s black as pitch outside.”

“There are street lamps, sir.”

“Ook,” the Librarian said.

“You don’t have to,” Drumknott began, but the Librarian gave him a stern look.

“ _Ook_ ,” he said emphatically.

“Yes, sir,” Drumknott said. Ridcully watched as Drumknott drew on his coat, and the Librarian walked him to the door, locking the Library behind him as he moved to go.

“You usually walk him home?” Ridcully asked.

“Ook,” the Librarian said, shrugging his shoulders. Ridcully gave a nod of his head, and he crossed his arms over his chest, watching the two of them as they walked out from the main building and out over the path, toward the gates. Drumknott wasn’t a very tall man – a half inch or so under 5’5”, and the Librarian looked almost tall beside him. They fell into step with one another, as if it was natural enough, and Ridcully felt, for just a moment—

Sad little thing, wasn’t he?

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

Ridcully didn’t much like the Patrician’s office. He wasn’t allowed to smoke in here. Or… He didn’t think so, anyway. Once or twice, he’d reached for his pipe, and been stopped short by such a startling stare that his fingers had jumped. He was a fussy sort, Lord Vetinari, couldn’t bear a strong smell of anything.

Ridcully had met his father, he thought. _Vincenzo_ …

And Drumknott.

He’d been looking for jobs for a while, Ridcully knew, had bounced around doing odd jobs for the guild, had been getting steadily more _frustrated_ , in fact, and now, he had this job with the Patrician. Ridcully had watched him in his office, pretending he didn’t know Ridcully was there, wearing his new spectacles, bustling back and forth between his desk and his filing cabinets.

“New clerk,” Ridcully commented, his hands in his pockets.

“My last one died rather suddenly,” Vetinari said blandly. He was looking out of the window, over the city. “Young Drumknott came highly recommended. A very competent young man.”

“Is he?” Ridcully asked. It was dangerous, in the Patrician’s office, but then, it was dangerous in Ankh-Morpork, and Drumknott tended to stumble into danger all the time. He wasn’t frightened of that sort of thing. Ridcully wasn’t certain he was frightened of anything, for that matter.

“Quite,” Vetinari said.

That was all.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

“Hey! Drumknott!” The wizards walking alongside Ridcully all jumped at the way his shout echoed in the corridor, but Drumknott did not flinch as he turned to look at him, adjusting his glasses on his face. “Why are you here? Reading?”

“Archchancellor,” he said, with a polite nod of his head. “It’s March, sir. I was downstairs – I play piano for Room XB in March. It keeps the files civil.”

“Up for a jog?” Ridcully asked, grinning. Many of the students in the corridor rushed away at faster rates, or shook their heads in sympathy.

Drumknott drew his pocket watch out of his pocket, looking at the time. It wasn’t, Ridcully noted, the watch he’d had for the past few years. That had been a much bigger thing, battered and dented and dull: this watch was small, and plated with gold instead of silver. It matched the gold of his spectacle frames.

A gift, Ridcully suspected, from Vetinari. He’d worked for him… A little under a year, now? It was a nice watch. It suited him better than the old one had, but it was a strange gift, Ridcully thought, from one’s employer.

“I have time,” Drumknott said.

Ridcully grinned.

“This is good for you, isn’t it?” Drumknott asked.

“Oh, yes,” Ridcully declared in a jolly voice as they ran over the green.

“I hate it,” Drumknott said.

“That just means you need to run more!”

And then the little clerk _laughed_. It was breathless and achy, coming from a dry throat, and then he said, “Archchancellor, may I tell you something?”

“Yes, Drumknott, tell away!”

“I think you’re an idiot, sir.”

“Ah, but merry idiots are we both, Drumknott!” Ridcully declared, and Drumknott shook his head.

“How many brothers do you have?” Drumknott asked.

“Five!”

“I’ve met High Priest Ridcully.”

“Oh?”

“I pray at Small Gods.”

“What does the Patrician say?” Ridcully asked, curious. Vetinari wasn’t of a religious bent, of that, Ridcully was certain.

Drumknott laughed. “Oh, I don’t tell him about that, sir,” he said. “He wouldn’t want to hear about it.”

Drumknott did _not_ do well in keeping up with him on the quick jog around the campus, his cheeks red, his breathing heavy, but he did better than Ridcully had expected, wearing a borrowed sweatshirt from the very back of Ridcully’s cupboard, from when Ridcully had been a _much_ younger man, and much smaller, although never as small as Drumknott.

When he dragged off the sweatshirt, to put his suit back on, Ridcully caught a glimpse of his back.

There were myriad scars there. Some of them were from a strap or a belt, but some of them were from burns, cuts, old wounds.

Ridcully didn’t mention it.

He knew better than that.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

“He going to be alright?” asked a gruff voice, and Ridcully looked up to see the figure of Commander Vimes. Funny little man – he seemed to have more titles than anything else these days, although he’d been tocking up the scars as well, in recent years. Ridcully nodded, stepping away from the infirmary bed.

They’d had to bring the Patrician here, in the end, but Ponder and Hex have sorted out the bulk of it…

“Another day or two,” Ridcully said, looking at the pale, drawn features of the Patrician, unusually still, even for him, where he lay on his back, his hands loosely folded over his chest. “He’ll be right as rain, what.”

“We’ve lost his clerk,” Vimes said, almost absently, as he looked down at the Patrician, and Ridcully felt his eyebrows raise. “Drumknott, you know.”

“Oh?” he asked.

“Sneaky little sod,” Vimes said. “He wouldn’t hurt the Patrician, though, I know that.”

“No,” Ridcully agreed. “No, he wouldn’t.”

“You know him well?” Vimes asked, but Ridcully was already moving past him, clapping him absently on the back. _Lost_ him, meaning the little bastard had evaded not only the Palace Guards set to watch him, but _also_ whatever member of the Watch. He _was_ a sneaky little sod.

Ridcully moved out into the city, walking with purpose, and people got out of his way, because that was what one did when one saw a wizard approaching. _Particularly_ when it was Ridcully himself, who was a big man, and was very recognisable as the Archchancellor of Unseen University, and thus was doubly worth avoiding.

He moved quite quickly until he got to the Temple District, and most of the priests shied away from him as he went directly toward the Temple of Small Gods. Hughnon, when he saw him, paused and frowned, taking a step forward and waving off the deacon that was still trying to talk to him.

“Mustrum?” he asked. “What are you doing here?”

“Got a little chap, three-piece suit, greased back hair? Like a human being, but in miniature?” Hughnon leaned back slightly, his eyebrows raising, and he turned to look into the temple, then gestured for Ridcully to follow him. He led him into a small antechamber, which had no natural light in it, and merely had a few rows of chairs, facing a lit bowl of oil.

Drumknott was sitting in the second row from the front, in the middle of the bench, his elbows on his skinny knees, his forehead pressed against his cupped hands. Ridcully saw the glint of the pendant held in them – one of Blind Io’s symbols – and in the dim glow of the blue fire, he could see Drumknott’s lips silently moving.

There were flowers in the oil. That wasn’t the standard: they were an offering, of course, and Drumknott had plainly dropped them in, the petals melting into the oil in little fragments of charred dust. It smelled sweet.

“Who is he?” Hughnon asked. Funny. A lot of people didn’t recognize Drumknott, when they saw him outside of the Palace, outside of the context of Vetinari. They did in the University, and that was probably why Drumknott was here, instead of beside Vetinari.

Ridcully shook his head, patting Hughnon on the back, and he moved slowly into the room. Drumknott didn’t look up, even when Ridcully sat down heavily beside him, the bench creaking slightly.

He waited patiently.

The thing about Ridcully that a lot of people didn’t realize was that he was more than capable of being patient, when he wanted to be. That was a big factor in hunting and fishing, after all: sitting quietly, still, and listening, waiting.

Drumknott wasn’t speaking in Morporkian. It was something like Latatian, one of the older languages of the Sto Plains, one of the ones that people didn’t tend to use outside of temples, or outside of reading holy books. Hughnon had a lot of it under his belt, of course, but it wasn’t a language for conversation.

It flowed off of Drumknott’s tongue like water, heavy and thick with significance in the echoing air of the antechamber, and Ridcully closed his eyes, listening to it. Was it in verse? It sounded like perhaps it was, the rhythm of it slow and easy, rushing one way and then the other.

There was a sort of magic in prayer.

Not a proper magic, no, but the two ran in parallel to one another, one feeding into the other, and then back again: the same words and invocations, the same… What Stibbons would probably call a shared _lexical set_.

Drumknott’s prayers came to an end, and he raised his head, holding his pendant loosely between his knees, the chain tangled in his fingers. He stared forward, and Ridcully noted that he wasn’t wearing his glasses.

He never wore those glasses, once upon a time. Ridcully remembered, when he was a teenager, he didn’t wear them. He had perfect vision, short range or long range, and Ridcully _knew_ it, and then he’d started working in Vetinari’s office, and wore those glasses, with the big wire frames, the big lenses. They made him look younger than he already did, and he was only twenty-four.

“How long have you worked for him, now?” Ridcully asked.

“Five years,” Drumknott said in a soft, wooden voice.

“He’d be very angry, I bet,” Ridcully said. “If he knew you were here. Praying for _him._ ” It was true, he thought, too. Not that it was something Vetinari would ever voice, exactly: it was too political for that, but Ridcully had grasped that he wasn’t much of a one for religion, and outside of the gentle bureaucracy of the temples, he was all but scornful.

“Yes,” Drumknott said. There was no shame in his voice, but merely a note of quiet challenge. “Yes, I know. Why? Are you going to tell him?”

“I don’t make a habit of telling the Patrician anything, young man,” Ridcully said.

“Don’t you?” Drumknott replied, close to casually, but not quite reaching the mark. “I tell him almost everything.”

“Yes,” Ridcully said. “I thought perhaps you did.”

There the shame was, blossoming on his face all at once even though nothing actually changed in his features: Drumknott looked down at his knees. His expression was entirely unreadable, revealing nothing, nothing at all, and still revealing everything. He was good at keeping his expression blank and neutral. He’d been like that at sixteen.

“Is that what this is?” Drumknott asked. “A lecture from a reluctant father figure?”

“Don’t know that I’d be much of a father figure for you, Drumknott,” Ridcully said. “Unless you want me to punch you.”

“I’d like to see you _try_ ,” Drumknott said. His lips shifted in the ghost of a smile, even as he clutched tight at the pendant in his hands, and then he turned his head, looking up at Ridcully beside him on the pew. He let his expression change slightly, now, and Ridcully saw the tightness around his mouth, the way his eyes shifted. _Worry_.

“What flowers did you offer?” Ridcully asked.

“Lilies,” Drumknott said. “He likes—” Drumknott stopped, and he exhaled, drawing the pendant up to his mouth and breathing on the metal. What he did next, Ridcully didn’t know – he knew that it wasn’t _actual_ magic, but Drumknott’s fingers moved so fast one could almost believe it was, and then the chain was gone from view. Disappeared into Drumknott’s sleeve, or perhaps one of his pockets. “Do you think it’s awful? Do you think I’m…?” He trailed off.

Ridcully wanted to say something. He thought about a few things to say.

None of them really appealed.

After a moment’s thought, he put an arm around the young man’s shoulder, dragging him closer. It was just for a second. Drumknott’s body wasn’t as soft to the touch than one would expect, his shoulders hard beneath the slight softness of his arms, his back a thick plane of muscle. He and Ridcully were built much the same way, in that respect, and a clerk’s robe was as good as a wizard’s robe for hiding definition.

Ridcully let him go, and Drumknott stood neatly to his feet, his chin raising.

“Feel better?” Ridcully asked, patting his shoulder.

“No,” Drumknott said. “Not really. Shall we back to the university?”

 Ridcully exhaled, puffing out his cheeks as he did so, and he looked down at Drumknott very critically. He did not especially like to consider Drumknott romancing anybody, least of all _the Patrician_ , who was rather like a long-legged and sarcastic bird of prey that one couldn’t even hunt. He was a hard man, vicious and cold. But then, Drumknott was vicious and cold too – Ridcully knew that, based off the way the young wizards scurried out of his way when they came across him in the halls at UU. In this moment, he looked neither vicious nor cold. He just looked… small. “You know. Drumknott. There’s a long history of, ah, of wizards not liking women.”

“Yes, Archchancellor. It’s in the University’s bylaws.”

“ _No_ ,” Ridcully said, holding up one scarred, strong finger, which Drumknott didn’t so much as glance at. “No, it’s… It’s natural. Normal. As much as it is to be interested in women. So long as it isn’t croquet!”

Drumknott frowned. “Croquet?”

“That doesn’t matter. And, you know, Vetinari is, ah…” Ridcully struggled for a moment to think of a positive adjective for the Patrician. One was not forthcoming. “Well,” he said. “He’s waiting.”

“He’s not waiting for anything, Archchancellor He’s in a coma.”

“Let’s go!” Ridcully bustled, thumping Drumknott on the back.

Drumknott hesitated, for long one moment, and he looked up at the Archchancellor, his face once more a mask. “Archchancellor,” he said quietly. “I would have— Had duty called me in that direction, I would have been very proud to have been a wizard under your instruction.”

“If you had the ability, you mean,” Ridcully said.

The pause between them went on for just a fraction of a second too long. “Yes,” Drumknott agreed, stepping back. “Of course.”

“Jolly good,” Ridcully said.

They made their way back to the Unseen University.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

“I don’t want _tea_ , Drumknott.”

“That’s a shame, my lord, because you’re going to drink some.”

Ridcully let his lips shift into a momentary grin before he shoved the doors of the infirmary open, and stepped inside. The Patrician was sitting up against the headboard, a mug of tea cupped between his thin, veiny hands, and he was sipping at it delicately. Drumknott was on his feet, and Ridcully watched the way he reorganised files on the table before him, no doubt priming the Patrician on what he had missed whilst he was comatose.

“Good morning, Archchancellor,” Vetinari said quietly. He looked even paler than usual, and there were dark shadows beneath his eyes despite the fact that he’d been unconscious for almost a week.

“Just had a note from one of your clerks,” Ridcully said as he stepped into the room. “Your coach will come up in another twenty minutes or so.”

“My thanks,” Vetinari murmured. “Drumknott has been apprising me on events I have missed.”

“He’s been invaluable,” Ridcully said brightly.

Drumknott glanced up from the files in front of him, and then he smiled, just slightly, before looking back to his work. The Patrician kept Ridcully’s gaze for a long, long moment… And then he looked at Drumknott. He didn’t smile, but there was an ever-so-slight shift of his lip, quirking up at one edge.

“Of course,” Vetinari said. “As ever.”

Ah. Well. There was… _one_ positive trait in the Patrician, then.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

It was a few years later that Professor Jitter’s death was on the roster. Ridcully was rather surprised to see Drumknott at the party, as Drumknott did not approve of parties at their core[6], but he spoke at some length with Professor Jitter, speaking to the old man quietly and with a pleasant warmth to his demeanour.

Death didn’t arrive until later on, once Jitter was lying down in his bed.

“ _Can_ you see him, Rufus?” Jitter asked. He always called him that.

“See whom, Professor Jitter?” Drumknott never returned the favour.

“See—”

Jitter looked past Drumknott, to the doorway, and Ridcully followed his gaze. Death stood in the doorway, scythe in hand, as ever. Ridcully shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. Drumknott did not follow his gaze, and instead, kept his gaze on Jitter’s face.

“No, sir,” Drumknott said. “I don’t really believe in anthropomorphising the concept. You’ll forgive me, but it always struck me as rather silly. Cartoonish, even. A figure in a black cloak, skull grinning, scythe in hand.”

Death paused. He had been walking smoothly across the room, but now he paused in line with Drumknott, beside Jitter’s bed, and Ridcully watched as Drumknott took a polite step to one side, giving him more space.

“You don’t— You don’t _believe_ in it?” Jitter repeated, his papery voice hoarse with age and fatigue.

Ridcully could see the black shade of Death’s cloak reflected in Drumknott’s glasses. His eyes were very still, not flickering around the room to take anything else in, and Ridcully felt himself frown.

“No,” Drumknott said.

Death said, _BUT—_

“I said,” Drumknott repeated pointedly, “ _No_.”

Death looked at Ridcully.

Ridcully, helpless, shrugged his shoulders.

Death looked back to Professor Jitter.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

“But,” Ponder Stibbons, the newest addition to the Unseen University’s faculty, said earnestly, leaning in toward Drumknott and peering up at him. They were sitting in Ridcully’s office, and Drumknott was sipping at two fingers of whiskey. Ridcully had been surprised when he’d asked for it, as Drumknott wasn’t a drinker, and didn’t already take in any at all, “but you _know_ we can see Death. Wizards and witches, I mean, you— You know that. So you know that it isn’t a theoretical anthropomorphising action, an act of belief, but a fact of the world. Death _is_ a figure, with a scythe, and a cloak, and what-not.”

“But I am not a wizard or a witch, Mr Stibbons,” Drumknott said. “I am a clerk.”

“But you _could_ have been,” Stibbons said, “couldn’t you? You spend so much time on the campus, Professor Pelc said to me that you’ve been coming here since you were six, and with that much exposure to a magical environment, surely—”

Drumknott looked up from his whiskey, and he looked Stibbons in the face. His eyes were very, very cold, and Stibbons stumbled off of his train of speech, scrambling back on the sofa that he and Drumknott were both setting on, leaning back against the other arm. He’d been… Not _flirting_ , exactly. Ridcully certainly wasn’t comfortable applying language like that to Stibbons. But he’d been mirroring Drumknott’s stiff body language, however unconsciously, had been focused and invested in their conversation.

On the upside, Ridcully supposed, he would no longer have to indelicately explain[7] to Stibbons that Drumknott was _already engaged_.

“When I was thirteen, Mr Stibbons,” Drumknott said, “my mother died.” He spoke so quietly and with such an edge of steel in his voice that the others in the room stopped talking almost out of instinct. Drumknott had only a little bit of his drink left in his glass, and Ridcully wasn’t sure how fast he’d drunk it. “My aunt had come down from Sto Radley to care for her, when she was ill. Cancer. She is a witch, my aunt. She decided, at the time, that I had an aptitude for the art.”

“For magic?” Stibbons asked eagerly.

“Being a witch isn’t really about magic. It isn’t about accumulating power, or creating exciting flashbangs with naught but one’s staff, or about doing one’s best to understand the universe, that you might command its movements. It’s about helping people. That’s why witches are infinitely more deserving of one’s respect than wizards.” Drumknott did not raise his voice. It wasn’t in his nature to do that: he spoke very quietly, scarcely above a whisper at any time, but despite the lacking volume, the words seemed to smash through the air like a hammer.

There was a ringing silence in the room. Ridcully watched Stibbons’ throat shift as he swallowed. The Dean of Indefinite Studies was leaning on the Lecturer in Recent Runes, the both of them with their mouths open, their eyes wide. The Dean looked furious. The Bursar, who had been rather quiet most of the evening, had his hand over his mouth, and if anything, he just looked sad.

“I wouldn’t,” Stibbons said, “I wouldn’t say being a wizard is about that.”

“No,” Drumknott said, and smiled. It was a rather nasty smile, Ridcully thought. “I suppose you wouldn’t, Mr Stibbons.”

“Why didn’t you go?” Ridcully asked.

“My sister asked me not to,” Drumknott said.

“That wasn’t the only reason, surely,” Ridcully said. It was a question, he thought, until he said it, and then it was a statement. And then he saw Drumknott’s face, the momentary show of uncertainty, before he knocked back the remainder of his glass.

“But— But to be a witch,” Stibbons said, “ _surely_ , Mr Drumknott, you must have had an aptitude for magic as well? It’s not just… It’s not just being sensible and having a calm demeanour.”

“There are more important things than magic,” Drumknott said.

“Like what?” Stibbons asked.

“Other people,” Drumknott said.

“You can care about both, I think,” Stibbons said, uncertain, his cheeks flushed. “You can— _I_ care about both.”

“Maybe so,” Drumknott said. “But which do you care about more?”

Stibbons looked hurt as Drumknott got to his feet, drawing an imaginary crease from his suit trousers and stepping away from the sofa. He didn’t sway, but he had drunk his whiskey very quickly, and Ridcully could see his hands twitch at his side as he gently set the whiskey glass down on the tray with the others.

“Funeral’s on Thursday,” the Bursar said.

“I can’t make it,” Drumknott murmured. “I did tell Professor Jitter. He said he didn’t mind.”

“It’s nearly two o’clock,” the Lecturer in Recent Runes said. “Are you going to walk back to the Palace now?”

“Why shouldn’t I?” Drumknott asked, taking up his coat from the rack and drawing it onto his shoulders, beginning to button it up. His fingers were a little more clumsy than usual, and Ridcully stood to his feet, taking his own cloak up from the stand and fastening it around his neck.

“Ook,” said the Librarian, darkly, from beside the Bursar.

“Not at all,” Drumknott disagreed. “It is the right of every citizen to walk through the streets of Ankh-Morpork unmolested.” He smiled, quietly, warmly, although the shift of his lips seemed brittle. “The Patrician has said so.”

“I’ll walk with you,” Ridcully said. It wasn’t a suggestion.

Drumknott gave a small nod of his head.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

“How’s the Patrician?” Ridcully asked. As they came away from the Unseen University, and the sheen of octarine on dark skies above their head was giving way to the natural smog of the rest of Ankh-Morpork. They could no longer see the stars, butt that was for the best: it didn’t do to go wandering about the city with one’s face aimed toward the sky.

“Was I too unkind to Mr Stibbons, do you think?”

“No,” Ridcully said. “Does him some good, to be told he’s an idiot by someone other than me. What’s Wendy like?”

He had never met Drumknott’s sister. He’d gleaned a little bit about her, here and there, from what Drumknott had said in one conversation or another, with Ridcully, or with others. He never revealed much, in any conversation, but you could pick up little clues, here and there, little hints one way or the other. That his father drank; that his mother watched him. That his father was violent. That he loved stationery, and filing. The Librarian said he even wrote poetry, but Ridcully wasn’t sure he believed that.

Wendy was five years older than Drumknott. She had three children: a son, Rodney, and two daughters, Alice and Abigail. She and her husband, Hamish, ran the old Drumknott Grocers’ in Dimwell, She was an anxious sort, Ridcully had heard, from Drumknott, and mostly from the Librarian. Very anxious.

“She doesn’t approve of me working in the Patrician’s Palace,” Drumknott said quietly. “She keeps counselling me to resign.”

“Does she know?” Ridcully asked.

Drumknott inhaled, and then he exhaled, very slowly. “No. But—” He stopped. “No,” he said.

“Seems to me,” Ridcully said, “that if she’s your sister, she shouldn’t mind what you do in your private life, what? She should want what makes you happy.”

“My sister doesn’t know what happiness is,” Drumknott said. “She never has.”

“Harsh.”

“No. Just true.”

They walked on in silence.

When they reached the gate of the Palace, Drumknott turned, and he put out his hand to share. Ridcully ignored it, and dragged the little clerk into a hug, patting his back hard. Drumknott was stiff for a moment, but then his arms passed around Ridcully’s lower back, hugging him back.

“Will he still be awake?” Ridcully asked. “You won’t wake him up?”

The idea of waking up the Patrician was not one that settled well with Ridcully: it filled him with a deep and uncertain well of instinctive emotion. The same sort of instinct that said you oughtn’t wake up a sleeping lion or a sleeping tiger. Then again, Ridcully wouldn’t wake either of them. He’d shoot them.

Shooting the Patrician wasn’t an entirely unappealing notion, although he supposed Drumknott would object.

“For at least another hour,” Drumknott said softly.

“You sleep in the same bed?”

“That’s a very personal question,” Drumknott said as they broke apart. His tone wasn’t chiding: it was merely a statement of fact. “But— Yes. Since I was stabbed, two years ago. He said he… He said he didn’t want me out of his sight, after that. It put some things in perspective.”

Ridcully felt…

He was a young man, Drumknott. Only twenty-six or so. He’d been nineteen or twenty when he’d joined the Patrician’s service: he’d been _young_ , inexperienced… Not naïve. No, not naïve. But— But young. Green. And Vetinari hadn’t been, whatsoever: he’d been nearly fifty.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Drumknott said. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Do you?” Ridcully asked. Drumknott set his jaw. “Could you see him? Death?”

“I don’t believe in—”

“You could see him,” Ridcully said. “You could.”

“I couldn’t,” Drumknott said. “But I knew that he was there. Cold spot, there’s a cold— And I can feel the space he occupies, in a room, especially because we were talking. The echo changes, the more people there are in a room. And when he spoke, it…” Drumknott shook his head, making a face of distaste and wrinkling his nose.  

“Why didn’t you become a witch?” Ridcully asked.

“I would have had to give up a lot, to be a witch,” Drumknott said. “Ankh-Morpork. The city. Stationery, paperwork. Witches don’t keep files. Most witches don’t even trust books, because theory can get in the way of practice.” Drumknott turned his head away, looking out over Widdershins Broadway, his fingers drawing over his own palm. “And I love Ankh-Morpork. The Librarian, and the Library… My sister. So I went to the Temple of Small Gods, and I prayed, and I decided to stay.”

“And if you’d been a wizard?” Ridcully asked. “You’d have had books, Ankh-Morpork, your sister, _and_ the magic.”

“Why would I want magic?” Drumknott asked. “All the wizards talk about it, about that rush of sensation, the way it rings in your head and sizzles in your veins, but it doesn’t feel good enough to give up everything else. I don’t want to understand the universe, Archchancellor, I just— I just want to get on with my work.”

Ridcully stared down at Drumknott for a long moment. “How do you know,” he asked, “what it feels like?”

“I don’t,” Drumknott said, neither too fast nor too slow. “I just told you, I hear the wizards talk about it.”

“No,” Ridcully said, “no, you said—”

“I’m going to wake up in three hours, Archchancellor,” Drumknott said, taking a step back toward the gate, and he gave him a polite little nod. “Would you like one of the Guard to accompany you back to the University?”

“No,” Ridcully said. “No. Good night, Drumknott.”

“Good night, Archchancellor,” Drumknott said, and Ridcully watched as he walked through the gates, making his way up the path toward the Palace. He felt like he’d just swallowed acid, and he didn’t much care for the sensation.

He poured himself a drink from his hat to take in on the way home. It was the sort of night for that.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

“You like the locomotive, then?” Ridcully asked, and Drumknott _beamed_ at him, grinned and showed all of his teeth as if it was Hogswatch and his birthday all at once, his face a mess of smut and grime, his overalls stained with oil, his hands, already rougher and harder than a clerk’s hands should be, with new callouses forming on them.

“Yes,” he said breathlessly. “Yes, I do.”

“And the Patrician?”

“He’s jealous, I think,” Drumknott said, with a little curl of his lips, wiping off his hands with a cloth. “Of how much I enjoy it, how much I care, but— But he doesn’t stop me.”

“Do you ever perhaps think,” Ridcully said, “that you oughtn’t think of the man you… that you love, in terms of what he might stop you from doing?”

“Unless I was harming Ankh-Morpork, Archchancellor, he wouldn’t stop me from doing anything.” He said it with such certainty, such complete and utter certainty. He sounded completely satisfied. “He would give me anything I asked for.”

“Why do I get the impression that you barely ask for anything?”

“Because I mostly ask for what he wants to give me.”

“What’s the point in that?”

“Oh, what’s the point in anything?”

“Mr Drumknott!” called Stoker Harrison, and Ridcully and Drumknott both turned to look at him. “One of the lads from the Palace says he’ll walk you back.”

“Is it Juniper?”

“No, his name is— Berry? Berry!”

“Yeah, alright. Tell him I’ll be five minutes.” He looked back to Ridcully. “I have to change. Talk to one of the stokers, they’ll give you a ride, I bet.”

“Good _afternoon_ , Drumknott,” Ridcully said, and Drumknott beamed as he walked back into the shed.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

He’d ridden to the University on his bicycle.

He loved the damn thing, that much was true, and Ridcully couldn’t help the slight smile on his face as he watched Drumknott ride onto the campus, neat clips keeping his trousers out of the way of the velocipede’s chain. When he stopped pedalling to glide, he had an expression of such beatific delight on his face, and then he braked, dismounting and bringing his bike up toward the stairs.

“That thing is a death trap,” Rincewind said.

“So is Ankh-Morpork,” Ridcully murmured, and he patted Drumknott on the shoulder as he came up the stair. “Feeling better after that business with the kidnappers?”

“I wasn’t kidnapped,” Drumknott said. “I told you that.”

He was going to be forty, later this year, Ridcully mused. He didn’t look like he was thirty-nine: he looked as young as Stibbons did, if not younger, and there was nearly seven years between them. He just had one of those faces, Ridcully supposed.

And he felt—

Proud.

Perhaps it was wrong of him, to feel that way, to feel _pride_ : he had nothing to do with Drumknott, really, outside of jogging together, now and then, outside of times Drumknott joined them for dinner, or when they spoke to one another in the street. He sent him something for his birthday, most years, and at some Hogswatches… Drumknott always sent _him_ something. Always. He was meticulous about that sort of thing. Ridcully was certain he kept a little record of birthdays and a Hogswatch card list.

“Where’s the Patrician?” Ridcully asked.

“Nowhere enjoyable,” Drumknott murmured, with a rueful smile. “A party.”

“He hates parties,” Ridcully said.

“Oh, yes,” Drumknott agreed. “But I couldn’t go with him, so…” He shrugged his shoulders.

He stayed, after dinner, which went on for a long time indeed, and then he came back up to Ridcully’s office, sat on his sofa and drank tea, because he very rarely drank alcohol, very rarely indeed. Ridcully didn’t think much about what they talked about. He talked about the University, about the various mayhems and japeries that had gone on recently, and Drumknott, as ever, shared next to nothing about his own work, but shared gossip from various guilds… He was a _mine_ of gossip. Luckily, Ridcully didn’t much care about gossip, which was perhaps why Drumknott felt so comfortable sharing it.

“Did you ever wish you could have gotten married?” Drumknott asked, and Ridcully coughed, choking on his brandy and raising his eyebrows. Drumknott wasn’t looking at him, but was instead looking into his teacup, his expression very thoughtful. The question had come out of the blue, and Ridcully stared at him.

He thought of Esme Weatherwax, back in Lancre. He thought of her, her shoulders straight, her chin high, and he thought of her face as he’d seen it last, the wrinkles around her mouth, her eyes, her chin, her cheeks, and how he’d thought…

“Yes,” Ridcully said. “Sometimes. But that wasn’t the life for me, what? I’m a wizard. Wizards don’t get married.”

“You don’t regret it?”

“No,” Ridcully said, shaking his head. And that was true, wasn’t it? He didn’t regret it – he wouldn’t go back, he didn’t think, and change it. Not now. Perhaps he would have, before, he would have, he would have, but it was different now. It was all different. And Esme… He exhaled quietly. “I’m an old man, Drumknott. There’s lots of time for regret.”

“Yes,” Drumknott said quietly.

“Do you think you’ll get married?” Ridcully asked.

Drumknott looked up from the depths of his teacup, his head tilting to the side, his eyebrows furrowing in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“After Lord Vetinari…”

Drumknott stared at him, his expression so stricken that Ridcully felt a burst of guilt, and before Drumknott could even move his lips, he was on his feet, reaching for the bottle of whiskey on the side table. Drumknott said, while he was pouring, “May I have a measure, please?”

“I just mean—”

“I know what you mean,” Drumknott said, his voice tight as he reached for the glass, bringing it up to his lips and taking a small sip. “No. No, I won’t.”

Ridcully sat down heavily on the sofa, looking at the younger man for a long moment. “When Lord Vetinari d—”

“Don’t,” Drumknott said. “Please. Don’t. This isn’t an— This isn’t one of Mr Stibbons’ intellectual exercises. Don’t.”

Ridcully sighed, leaning back against the sofa cushions. “You’re a young man, Drumknott. You’ll likely live decades after him. You shouldn’t write yourself off as unhappy forever, just because—”

“ _Please_ ,” Drumknott said. “Please.”

“You don’t want children?” Ridcully asked. Would he have had children himself, if he’d wanted? He thought of all the others in the university, but he was their _manager_ , their executive, for the most part, and they were all old men. The students… The students were idiots.

Stibbons. Stibbons, he was—

Ridcully was very proud of Stibbons. Stibbons was the sort of son he might have liked, he thought, if he’d had children. If they could be children like him, perhaps he would have. And like Drumknott, too. Drumknott, whose face crumpled at the question, and he brought his glass back up to his mouth, taking a gulp of the whiskey.

“Well?” Ridcully asked. “Don’t you?”

Drumknott’s expression crumpled further, like he was about to cry, and he nodded his head.

“I know that you— You care for him. But he’s an old man, he should never have—”

“If he hadn’t, I don’t think I would have been this happy,” Drumknott said. “Not ever. And I wouldn’t want to… I wouldn’t choose…” He shook his head, emphatically, and Ridcully exhaled, dragging his palm hard over his mouth. “Because he’s selfish with me, and I’m selfish with him, and I’d never been allowed to be selfish with another person before, before him.”

Ridcully digested this.

He’d never heard someone say something like that before. It was—

It was insane.

It was _maddening_.

And yet, coming from Drumknott’s mouth, it sounded—

It sounded completely true.

“Wizards are selfish, of course,” Ridcully said.

“Witches can be selfish too,” Drumknott mumbled. “At the end of it all. They’re more selfless, and they believe in… in duty. Yes. They help people. But some of them are so— When you’re a witch, you know, you have so much authority, it’s so easy to…” Drumknott took another gulp of his drink.

“Is that why you didn’t become a wizard? Or a witch? Because…?”

“I suppose. I don’t know,” Drumknott said.

“Can you do—”

“Why is that all you _ever_ ask?” Drumknott asked.

“It’s important,” Ridcully murmured.

“It really isn’t,” Drumknott said.

“It is to me,” Ridcully said. “I _am_ a wizard.”

Drumknott exhaled, and then he held out his glass.

“Sure?” Ridcully asked.

“Sure,” Drumknott said. Ridcully poured him another measure.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

“That’s— You know, quite possibly, the stupidest thing anyone has ever said in my presence,” Drumknott said. It was close to four in the morning, and the conversation had, of course, turned to evolution. Drumknott, it seemed, agreed with Ponder Stibbons on almost everything.

It was a very good job, Ridcully supposed ruefully, that Stibbons was outright terrified of Drumknott, because he might have become rather impassioned, having heard Drumknott speak so darkly and eruditely on the subject of evolution.

“It’s s’not stupid,” Ridcully said, rapping his knuckles against the table. They were in the Uncommon Room, and there was a multitude of bottles scattered on the long table. Drumknott had, Ridcully was certain, _actually_ drunk quite a lot, but he seemed just as sober as Vetinari did, when _he_ was drunk. No stumbling, no unsteadiness on his feet.

He laughed, now and then. He smiled more easily. Sometimes his hands were a bit clumsy, and that was all.

He _was_ drunk. Ridcully was sure of that.

“In fact, it’s incredibly stupid,” Drumknott said. “It is _farcical_.”

“Farcical. It’s not farcical,” the Lecturer in Recent Runes said. “I’m just saying—”

There was a knock at the door.

“Who’s _that_?” Stibbons asked, stumbling over the words.

“A _student_?” the Dean demanded, looking horrified.

“No,” Drumknott said, and he stepped almost smoothly across the room, opening the door.

The Patrician stepped neatly into the Uncommon Room, and Drumknott took his coat and his gloves with a natural ease, setting them aside with his own in the corner of the room, and Ridcully watched the way he examined his personal clerk, taking him in.

“Mr Drumknott,” the Patrician said. “You are drunk.”

“Yes, sir,” Drumknott said. “I didn’t think you were back until twelve tomorrow, I was going to… I am drunk.”

“As a…?” Vetinari prompted, his lips quirking slightly up at their edges, and Drumknott frowned at him.

“As a _man_ , sir,” he said chidingly.

“Drink?” Ridcully asked.

“ _Please_ ,” Vetinari said.

And that was that. It was not as if they’d not done this before, what with the football matches, but…

It was different, with Drumknott here. He was so restrained, usually, even more so than Vetinari, if anything, and now he was… _Laughing_. Ridcully watched, at one point, at the way he laughed, leaning back against the sofa, where Vetinari’s arm was laid over the back of the cushion. For a moment, Drumknott’s head was settled in the crook of Vetinari’s elbow, his knees leaning to touch against Vetinari’s own. Neither of their faces changed, and it was just the connection of a moment, but Ridcully saw it.

And then, of course, for propriety’s sake, he drew back, leaned forward, and picked a semantic fight with the Senior Wrangler.

Drumknott and Vetinari, both together, picked his every word apart.

When Drumknott fell asleep, that was different. He sort of fell forward, his face against his palm, and when Vetinari reached out and very gently tipped him to the side by his shoulder, he fell tipsily to the side, his head falling against Vetinari’s hip. His eyes were still closed, but he groaned quietly, and Vetinari’s hand gently touched his shoulder.

Drumknott looked small, like this, one knee awkwardly drawn up toward his chest on the sofa, his face pressed against Vetinari’s hip. Vetinari reached down, gently removing his glasses, and he folds them, slipping them into his pocket.

“I didn’t know he drank,” said the Senior Wrangler. If any of the other wizards thought it odd that the Patrician should be so easy with his clerk, or that his clerk should be allowed to lay his head almost in the man’s lap, none of them showed it in their faces. Perhaps because they were too drunk to notice.

It was undoubtedly calculated, Ridcully was sure of that.

And he saw Vetinari smile down at Drumknott at least twice, after that, at least—

There was that.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

“Do you need a hand?” Ridcully asked.

“No,” Vetinari murmured. “He isn’t heavy, and I’m not very drunk.” He drew one of Drumknott’s arms up and around his neck as he lifted him up off the sofa, carrying him like a bride, and Drumknott let out some mumbled sentence that Ridcully couldn’t understand. Vetinari’s lips shifted into an indulgent smile.

“I’ll walk with you,” Ridcully said, and he walked alongside Vetinari out of the Uncommon Room, down the corridor. “He said you were at a dinner.”

“Oh, I was,” Vetinari murmured, his nose wrinkling just slightly, and Drumknott shifted in his arms, his face pressing closer against Vetinari’s chest. The Patrician was… _cradling_ the clerk, almost. “I made my excuses earlier than I would have.”

“Getting tired in your old age?” Ridcully asked.

Vetinari gave him a wan smile, a silent affirmative, and Ridcully felt as if he’d been doused in cold water. When would the Patrician die? Ridcully wasn’t sure. He had thought in five years, in ten, but—

“He loves you, you know,” Ridcully said.

Vetinari looked at him in surprise. It wasn’t an exaggerated expression, just a widening of the eyes, a slight parting of his lips.

“Yes,” he said, finally. “Yes, I know.”

“You should take better care of him.”

“I do as much as he’ll let me,” Vetinari murmured, as they moved out onto the green, where Vetinari’s coach was waiting. “He cares for you quite a bit, you know. He admires you a great deal.”

“He’s a good lad.”

“Oh, not at all,” Vetinari said fondly. “Not at all.”

It was strange, to see him so fond about something that wasn’t one of his dogs, before each of them had died.

“You have a plan, I presume,” Ridcully said, “for when you die.”

“Yes,” Vetinari said, and he gently handed Drumknott over to one of his Dark Clerks, letting the man carry the clerk back into the coach.

“And him?”

“He’ll be taken care of,” Vetinari said, his chin raised, his hands loosely folded in front of his belly as he looked at Ridcully. He didn’t argue. He merely met Ridcully’s gaze, evenly, his own expression a mask.

“Good,” Ridcully said. “Good.”

“Good night,” Vetinari murmured.

“Good night,” Ridcully replied. There was a strange sense of finality in it, he felt.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

It was later that year that it happened.

Just a few months after, the morning Vetinari was assassinated, and Lipwig took the Patricianship, Ridcully stared into space as Stibbons read aloud from the paper, held loosely in his palms.

The night of, Drumknott was in Ridcully’s office. He sat in one of his armchairs, his knees curled up to his chest, staring into space. He didn’t cry. He didn’t drink. His face didn’t change, didn’t show any emotion, He just sat very, very still.

“You’re not wearing your glasses,” Ridcully said.

“I don’t need them,” Drumknott muttered.

“Are you going to stay with Lipwig?”

“No,” Drumknott said. “No, I’m going to move on… this week.”

“Oh,” Ridcully murmured. “Where?”

“I don’t know yet,” Drumknott said. “I need to help the Patrician first, ensure is all as it ought be.”

“Did you see Death?”

“No,” Drumknott murmured. “No, I was downstairs, trying to sort out a… a wine order. It wasn’t _important_. It wasn’t even office work. It was simple Palace bureaucracy. I knew it was coming, I just…”

He shook his head.

He turned his head, and he looked at the candelabra on the table.

“More light?” Ridcully asked.

Drumknott turned his hand over, staring at his palm, and then he murmured a few sentences of Words: full to the brim with magic, sizzling as they hit the air, and Ridcully watched the candles flicker into life.

Drumknott’s head tipped back against the chair, and Ridcully heard him sigh.

“I haven’t done that,” Drumknott said, “since I was sixteen years old, and you told me to.”

“You remember the words, though.”

“I remembered the feeling,” Drumknott murmured. “I need to go home. I’m… contemplating the idea of sleeping alone in my bed, and it almost feels more painful than anything else. He—” He stopped, swallowing.

“You can say it,” Ridcully said. “I’m not in the business of being shocked by anything you might say.”

“It’s foolish.”

“You’ve been with that awful man twenty years, lad, I think you can stand to be a little foolish right about now.”

Drumknott put his head in his hands. “I never used to like dogs,” he said. “I didn’t— I didn’t _hate_ them, I just didn’t care about them, and then I got used to Wuffles always clambering into my lap or sleeping on my feet, and then having him in the bed, and Mr Fusspot always used to crawl right between our chests, or try to sleep on my neck, and… And he said we couldn’t— And he was right. I knew he was right at the time. He said it would be… That it would be unfair, to get another dog, because we’d only end up having to, because he knew if we got another dog that it would outlive him, if not both of us. I know it would have been selfish, and we couldn’t have done it, I just… It wouldn’t feel quite so earth-shatteringly awful, if…”

Ridcully looked at him for a long moment, and then said, “Yes, it would.”

“Yes,” Drumknott mumbled. “It would.”

He stood to his feet, rubbing at one eye, and Ridcully dragged him into a hug, squeezing him tightly, and Drumknott, for once, didn’t hesitate at all. He hugged Ridcully back, dropping against his chest and leaning heavily against him, and Ridcully patted his back hard.

“It’s going to be alright,” Ridcully murmured.

“No, it isn’t,” Drumknott said. “Not ever again.”

“Don’t be dramatic, lad. It doesn’t suit you.”

Drumknott smiled, and he muttered a word under his breath, flicking his hand in the direction of the candles: they went out with a soft _whoosh_.

“Alright,” Ridcully said. “Maybe it does.”

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

“Did you know?” Ridcully demanded, and he leaned right over the Librarian, ignoring the way Stibbons hurried to drag him back by his sleeve to try to keep him from angering the orangutan, but the Librarian’s expression was glum. “Did you _know_?”

“Stop it,” Rincewind said. “It’s not his fault. It’s not anyone’s.”

The Librarian said, quietly, “Ook.”

Ridcully sat down heavily beside him, and he put his head in his hands. The Librarian patted his shoulder, and Ridcully put his hand heavily over his mouth.

“He told me he was _going away_ ,” Ridcully said. “Sneaky little bastard lied right to my face. He always could, but I never…” He stopped talking. His mouth tasted like ashes.

The Uncommon Room was silent, then, for a long, long while.

 

[1] It had.

[2] Most of the tea break was concerned with his banana more than his tea, of course.

[3] He continued to be the secretary of the AMSAS for the next thirty years. Regularly, the other members of the board would nominate him to be chairman of the board, to which Drumknott would smile politely, and say that he had no ambitions in that direction.

[4] A tome on the skinness or fatness of aunts and uncles and what effect this had upon their personality.

[5] Who was not especially young now, but as Ridcully had only met her, briefly, as a baby, this was how he thought of her.

[6] Drumknott’s own birthdays ordinarily involved an afternoon off in the same week, but attempts to sing at him, cheer, buy him drinks, or engage in playful conversation about his age were met with silent, scathing stares.

[7] Ridcully did not believe himself capable of delicacy, and in any case, did not feel inclined to give it a try.

**Author's Note:**

> Hit me up [on Dreamwidth](https://dictionarywrites.dreamwidth.org/2287.html). You can send requests [on Tumblr](http://patricianandclerk.tumblr.com/ask), too. Requests always open.


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